


December, 1999

by ussnicole



Series: Welcome to Suburbia [6]
Category: Neck Deep (Band)
Genre: Breakups, Cold, December - Freeform, Depression, F/M, Heartbreak, Pining, Rock Bottom - Freeform, Snow, Songfic, Suburbia, Superstition, The Beach is for Lovers (Not Lonely Losers), Winter, beach, he's sad, serpents, she cheated, small town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 02:10:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11613747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ussnicole/pseuds/ussnicole
Summary: Heartache in Suburbia.Ben never thought familiar streets could be so cold.





	1. Rock Bottom

Ben walked down the snowy streets, head down and hands in his pockets. His breath billowed out in front of him as he sighed heavily, kicking the grungy snow at his feet. He walked under the highway onto East 12th Street, shivering as he pulled his flannel closer around him. It was too cold outside; he should have worn more layers.

Ben’s house wasn’t much further past the highway, and soon he was walking up to the front door and letting himself in. The house was eerily quiet; she hadn’t been there in a while, and the silence was a heavy reminder. Ben hadn’t been back to his house in a while either, and the pictures of the two of them were still up on the walls. As he walked back into the house, he removed them meticulously, placing them face down on the floor.

The heat wasn’t on in the house, and Ben’s breath was still visible as he settled wearily onto a chair by the kitchen table. None of the four chairs surrounding the small table matched - a feature she had insisted on. Ben felt like he was laying in a grave of his own invention, stuck in hell, completely rock bottom. He glanced around the room and his eyes fell on the phone, merely reminding him that he had ignored all of his friends when the trouble with her had begun, and now they probably didn’t even care how he was doing.

Everything in the house was a reminder.

The kitchen, where she had stood and told him that he was self-destructive, laughing at him as he shrugged, told her she was the best self destruction he had ever met.

The living room, where she carded her hand through his hair and took his pulse and told him that she felt nothing, smiling as he told her that he was probably already dead.

He should have known that she was helping dig his grave, slowly but surely, burying him in everything they couldn’t ever become before she turned away and left him for another man. Ben glanced out the window; when had it gotten dark? It didn’t really matter, since the sun never came out much these days. He had forgotten how the sun felt on his skin.

Ben eyed the phone, and then walked over and dialed a number. Time to resurrect and start again.


	2. Serpents

Ben was back on the streets early the next morning; he still hadn’t turned the heat on and the bed was more cold than usual without a second source of body heat. Truth be told, Ben had noticed, the house was colder than it had ever been. It was not a big house in the least, but to Ben it felt smaller somehow, the walls closing in on him. Ben burst out of the front door and gasped for air, not even realizing that he had been holding his breath.

After a coughing fit that brought tears to his eyes, Ben pulled a beanie over his unruly blonde hair and then ducked his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets, standing at the edge of the sidewalk and looking both ways down East 12th Street. He spent a minute in silent deliberation and then turned down Arlington Drive, back towards the highway that cut through town. Arlington also passed under the highway and he stopped there for a minute, leaning against one of the huge cement supports. It hadn’t snowed in a few days and the snow that was left over was mostly dusty slush gathering in gutters and on lawns. Water dripped off the highway and formed rivulets in the snow under the highway, slowly trickling down the street.

Arlington met Cemetery Drive right under the highway. Ben stood at the crossroads for a while, gazing down the street indecisively. He knew what was down Cemetery Drive – she lived there. If Ben believed in ghosts, he would have been positive that her new house was haunted. It was a tall, dark house with closed shutters; Ben would bet all of his money that even if there were ghosts in that house, she would have sent them running.

Standing on the corner of Arlington and Cemetery, listening to the rumble of cars going by overhead, Ben was hit by a memory of the last time she had kissed him. She had tasted so sweet, so pure and happy. He was so tired; she had drained him. Suddenly he had an urge to lie down and never get up. He had given her his everything, and she didn’t want it. That wasn’t even the worst part – far from it. She had taken his heart and crushed it into a million pieces, and he was left to sift through the pieces like a new bag of Legos waiting to be put together.

When Ben couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers, nose, or toes, he turned back to Arlington and began to shuffle home. As he walked away, a partially melted icicle broke loose from the highway and shattered right where he had been mere seconds before.

Ben had never walked home faster.


	3. The Beach Is For Lovers (Not Lonely Losers)

Thanks to the call Ben had made the night before, he finally had plans for later in the evening. He had called his best friend Fil, who had in turn invited their mutual friends Matt, Sam, and Dani to hang out downtown. Ben had planned to stay at his house until the evening and then go out, but when he got back to his house he wandered around aimlessly. Sitting on the stack of speakers in his living room Ben stared at his acoustic guitar, which had accumulated a fine layer of dust. It had been so long since he had played – he had last played for her.

Suddenly he began to cry, his emotions catching up to him. Who had he been kidding? He missed her dearly. At this revelation he changed his mind about staying home and decided on walking down 12th, towards the sea. He had always been fond of the beach, he reasoned, and even if it was winter the ocean would calm him down, make him feel better.

The streets were empty as he walked; it was still mid-December and people were at work or at home, out of the cold. None of the usual Christmas bustle filled the air – not on a Wednesday. Ben had never noticed before (probably because he usually looked up when he walked, not at his feet), but the sidewalks were cracked and crumbling. No one cared enough to fix them. Ben could relate. Even with his friends agreeing to meet up, where were they when he needed them? Ben guessed that pushing them away didn’t help, but couldn’t any of them see that he needed the exact opposite of what he said he wanted? He had hoped that he was more transparent.

Ben looked down when he left his house, and then next time he looked up was when his feet hit sand. The wind blowing off the ocean was frigid and he cursed his stupidity as he had yet again left the house with only a flannel and beanie. Ben trudged down the beach towards the surf, where the sand was more compact and less likely to sneak its way into his boots. After walking down the water for a few minutes Ben stopped and looked out to the horizon, sighing again. What was he thinking? The beach was for lovers, not lonely losers trying to figure out what went wrong. He was never going to be able to get her back – not that he particularly wanted to. He was chasing ghosts, he saw that now. It was true, then, what people always said: hindsight really is 20/20.

Ben was suddenly reminded of something his father used to say all the time: “Take heed, boy,” he’d begin, always boy and never son, but the affection was there, “don’t wait until you’re like me to look back over your past with nothing but regret.” Ben had never really understood this – what did he have to regret? – but now he understood. With this revelation he checked his watch and realized it was time to meet his friends.

Fil, Dani, Matt, and Sam were all waiting for Ben at the bowling alley on Lime Street. Ben found himself smiling for the first time in a long time; they used to come to this bowling alley practically every week. When the four boys saw Ben walking up they grinned, walking over to meet him and give him a big group hug.

“You done being an idiot?”

“No, but I’m done being one without you guys,” Ben answered, laughing as they all punched him lightly and headed inside.


	4. December

Things were looking up, Ben conceded, but they weren’t perfect yet. He was still struggling without her, but his friends were helping. He saw at least one of them, if not all four, every day, and they kept him out of the gutter. Dani had come over one day and saw the state the house was in and then insisted that they spend four hours tidying up and putting everything back together. Dani turned the heat on, packed up all the photographs of her into a box, and then cooked up some soup for Ben, staring at him disapprovingly until Ben had swallowed down every last drop.

“How long have you not been eating?”

“I don’t know,” Ben replied truthfully. He hadn’t even noticed. Dani sighed in frustration.

“For fuck’s sake, Ben, you can’t starve yourself!”

“I wasn’t hungry!” Ben defended, shrugging at his friend. Dani just rolled his eyes.

“Jesus.”

When his friends weren’t watching over him and making sure he wasn’t doing anything unhealthy, Ben liked to stumble around the block half drunk, trying to talk himself into either going back inside or walking down to Cemetery Drive and force her to talk to him. By the thousandth time he called her with no answer, he gave up and stopped calling. One time he saw her drive by, smiling and laughing with her new man. He punched a hole in his bedroom wall when he got home, which was extremely hard to explain to Dani the next time he came over. Neither were the bloody knuckles that he had been ignoring.

After the stumbling around the block phase, Ben started to sit in a small park on 8th until his hands went numb and it hurt to breathe in the frigid air.

After the freezing himself half to death phase, Ben finally picked his guitar back up and began to play. He wrote a few sad songs, settling on a slow, bittersweet song that he practiced until it was perfect. He wondered if she’d ever hear it, if she’d even care or recognize his voice if she did.

It was during this phase that he started to feel less malevolent towards her. Ben started to remember all the things she had hoped and dreamed for. She always used to talk about wanting a perfect little house with a rose red door, wanting to dance on a ballroom floor, wanting to travel to France and Italy. He hoped she got all her wishes granted. Somehow, that would make her leaving him better, he supposed.

With this benign revelation, Ben also realized that his pain wasn’t permanent. Someday, he’d forget about her, get over her, find a new love. _Pain is never permanent_ , he wrote down as he picked his guitar and looked for a new melody, _but tonight it’s killing me_.


End file.
